I looked at them both with disgust as they came towards me. “How generous of him. He obviously has a passion for trash.”

Janice shot me an icy glare, but quickly checked herself. She knew very well that I could not care less about her good opinion, and that her anger just amused me.

I was born four minutes before her. No matter what she did, or said, I would always be four minutes older. Even if-in Janice’s own mind-she was the hypersonic hare and I the plodding turtle, we both knew she could run cocky circles around me all she liked, but that she would never actually catch up and close that tiny gap between us.

“Well,” said Archie, eyeing the open door, “I’m gonna take off. Nice to meet you, Julie-it’s Julie, isn’t it? Janice told me all about you-” He laughed nervously. “Keep up the good work! Make peace not love, as they say.”

Janice waved sweetly as Archie walked out, letting the screen door slam behind him. But as soon as he was out of hearing range, her angelic face turned demonic, like a Halloween hologram. “Don’t you dare look at me like that!” she sneered. “I’m trying to make us some money. It’s not as if you’re making any, is it now?”

“But then I don’t have your kind of… expenses.” I nodded at her latest upgrades, eminently visible under the clingy dress. “Tell me, Janice, how do they get all that stuff in there? Through the navel?”

“Tell me, Julie,” mimicked Janice. “How does it feel to get nothing stuffed in there? Ever!”

“Excuse me, ladies,” said Umberto, stepping politely between us the way he had done so many times before, “but may I suggest we move this riveting exchange to the library?”

Once we caught up with Janice, she had already draped herself over Aunt Rose’s favorite armchair, a gin and tonic nestling on the foxhuntmotif cushion I had cross-stitched as a senior in high school while my sister had been out on the prowl for upright prey.